Werewolves are coming back into fashion, apparently, although I can’t see them attaining the kind of cultural penetration achieved by vampires and zombies in recent years, if only for budgetary reasons. Sure, you can go the way Jacques Tournier did in Cat People (or Steven Spielberg did in Jaws if, y’know, you’re an idiot) and not show the monster, but that’ll only work once. No, while false fangs and grey greasepaint are cheap and plentiful, a werewolf is an expensive fancy, and with few exceptions, limited to films with a decent budget. So here we go with a big budget remake of George Waggner’s 1941 monster classic, The Wolf Man.
the plot is light, but that’s to be expected - this is the classic werewolf story, and can really only go one way. After his brother is torn asunder by a mysterious creature (whatever could it be?) actor Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro doing an impersonation of the original’s Lon Chaney, Jr.) returns to his ancestral home in the kind of murky, anachronistic Victorian England that looks like a Hollywood backlot even when it’s shot on location. He clashes with his eccentric father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins, enjoying himself) and begins to develop feelings for his brother’s fiancé, Gwen (Emily Blunt, barely there), before being bitten by the ravenous werewolf, which of course afflicts him with the curse. From there it’s a fast moving but predictable romp towards the end credits, as Lawrence tries to discover the identity of the first werewolf while deflecting the suspicions of Inspector Abberline (Hugo Weaving, playing Hugo Weaving With A Moustache).
The Wolfman feels like it came out fifteen years too late, and would have sat more comfortably alongside 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula and 1994’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the third entry in a kind of Universal Monster trilogy. As it stands, it’s been cast out into the world to sink or swim on its own, and it doesn’t really have the kind of brand-name recognition it needs to make a fist of it without the support of its better-known stable mates. Werewolves aren’t in the limelight yet, and I can’t see this film kicking them into mainstream consciousness.

Given the production problems - original director Mark Romanek was replaced by Joe Johnston, the Danny Elfman score was discarded, then picked up again, and there were numerous reshoots and editing problems - it’s not surprising that there’s no real authorial voice present. It never strays too far from the story archetype laid out by the 1941 film, and so its success depends wholly on how well it satisfies the expectations that viewers already have in mind, rather than by subverting those expectations. On the whole, it works, in much the same way two minute noodles work when you’re hungry.

The makers of the film have clearly cast to type, with only del Toro perhaps being a surprising choice. However, he is channelling Chaney Jr. to the point of actually attempting to look like him, so rather than getting del Toro’s interpretation of the character, we’re getting del Toro’s impersonation of Chaney’s interpretation of the character. The rest of the cast do exactly what you expect them to: Hopkins is grand and vaguely sinister, Weaving is dogged and intense, and Blunt has breasts. Art Malik’s turn as Hopkins’ Sikh manservant Singh, however, is woefully underused, and I feel that most of that character didn’t make it to the final cut.

Like many historical horror films, The Wolfman suffers from an overwhelming sense of artifice. Although the costumes, the locations and art direction are all gorgeous, they are also patently unreal, and so undermine the film’s efforts at horror. The suspension of disbelief is never engaged to the point where one can believe that the characters are in any danger, so the horror never gets beyond the gut-level flinch response. The Victorian milieu depicted could be the same one seen in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, a generic hodgepodge of grey tones and historical inaccuracies. It’s mythical realm in and of itself, so the intrusion of a monster into that world lacks any punch because the world depicted is already fantastical. The presence of a werewolf here is as surprising as a hobbit in Middle Earth.
The werewolf depicted is, of course, the creation of Rick Baker, whose work on An American Werewolf in London was so damn good they invented a new Oscar category just so they could give him one. His work here is conservative but effective, taking the original designs by Jack Pierce and elaborating using modern effects techniques. However, it should be noted that Baker worked on the makeup only, not the transformation sequences. Although the painful twisting and elongating we see owes a great debt to American Werewolf, they were achieved with CGI, not practical effects. The werewolf’s clumsy switch from biped to quadruped, reminiscent of nothing so much as Liev Schrieber’s Sabretooth, was also apparently added in after Baker’s involvement ended.
Having said that, The Wolfman is an enjoyable film, comfortable in its familiarity. Everyone involved seems committed to the pantomime, and there’s fun to be had ticking the boxes as each trope of the narrative is fulfilled. Where the film falters is when it veers the original and tries something new. An attempt to inject a Freudian subtext into the relationship between Talbot Senior and Junior is ham-fisted, and serves only to lengthen the film. Likewise, a brief interlude where Lawrence is confined to a London insane asylum adds nothing to the narrative, and seems to exist only to launch a ten-minute tribute to An American Werewolf in London, complete with car accidents and screaming crowds.

No, The Wolfman is like a comfortable old jumper, or a favourite childhood story; its strength is in its familiarity. It’s a nursery rhyme for horror geeks, a comfort food, and maybe that’s no bad thing. It does exactly what it says on the tin, reinterpreting on old story model for a new generation. I can’t see it being a big hit, and it won’t linger in the mind for too long, but horror fans wanting an undemanding hundred minutes or so should get a kick out of it.

Written by Travis Johnson.
Republished with permission from Celluloid and Whiskey.